Exciting Program Updates for the AIBS Annual Meeting in May

“Biodiversity: The Interplay of Science, Valuation, and Policy” is the theme of the 2006 AIBS annual meeting, to be held 24–25 May 2006 at the Westin Grand Hotel in Washington, DC. Plenary lectures and discussion groups of scientists, policy experts, economists, and journalists will approach the topic from several interwoven perspectives.

Plenary speakers are

Panels and discussion groups will be held throughout the day on 25 May. The first discussion group, entitled “Communicating about Science in Public and Policy Arenas,” will be led by Chris Mooney, Washington correspondent for Seedmagazine and author of The Republican War on Science,and Matthew Nisbet, of the School of Communication at The Ohio State University. The second discussion group, “Valuing Ecosystem Services,” will be led by plenary speakers Daniel Esty, Richard B. Norgaard, and Stephen Polasky. The third group, “The Endangered Species Act: Science Influencing Policy and Policy Influencing Science,” will be led by Jamie Rappaport Clark, a plenary speaker, and J. Michael Scott, Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, University of Idaho.

Attendees interested in working toward expanding career, professional development, and service opportunities in the biological sciences for women, minorities, and persons with disabilities are welcome to register for the Diversity Luncheon. Participants will have the opportunity to talk with the AIBS leadership, interact with members of the AIBS Human Resources Committee, and network with others who want to create a more diverse scientific community. The guest speaker for the Diversity Luncheon is Robert Stanton, former director of the National Park Service.

In addition, the annual meeting will be preceded on 23–24 May by an AIBS business meeting for the general membership, combined with a meeting of the AIBS Council of member societies and organizations, to discuss AIBS activities, plans, and priorities.

All sessions will take place in the Westin Grand Hotel, 2350 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037 (three blocks north of the Foggy Bottom Metro station, on the edge of Georgetown). Special room rates are available until 21 April.

The early registration fee for individual AIBS members is $100; for non-members, $150 (which includes membership in AIBS and a subscription to BioSciencefor one year); for government employees, $90; for educators, $80; for students, $75.

Register now! Early registration ends 2 May, and attendance is limited to 200.

New AIBS Board Members Take Office

AIBS welcomes three new Board members to the Spring 2006 AIBS Board meeting this May, chaired by 2006 President Kent E. Holsinger, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut. Douglas J. Futuyma, Department of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York, comes to the Board as president-elect for 2006 (president in 2007). He is joined by Eric S. Nagy, Department of Biology, University of Virginia, and Terry Yates, University of New Mexico, both of whom have been elected to three-year terms.

Departing the AIBS Board this year, with our best wishes and sincere appreci-ation,are Joel Cracraft,American Museum of Natural History, immediate past-president, 2005; and Board members Christopher Haufler,Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, and Mary McKenna, Department of Biology, Howard University.

AIBS Names 2006 Emerging Public Policy Leaders

The AIBS Public Policy Office is pleased to announce that Cornell University PhD candidate Madhura Kulkarni and University of Maryland (Baltimore County) PhD candidate Christopher Hofmann were chosen from an impressive and highly competitive applicant pool to receive the 2006 AIBS Emerging Public Policy Leader Awards. This is the fourth year that AIBS has recognized graduate students poised to make a contribution both in the biological sciences and in science policy.

The pair received an expense-paid trip to Washington, DC, where they participated in a two-day congressional visits event sponsored by the Biological and Ecological Sciences Coalition and the Coalition on Funding Agricultural Research Missions. They met with congressional leaders, listened to briefings by key government officials, and attended a reception honoring Representatives Vernon J. Ehlers (R–MI) and Rush Holt (D–NJ) for their work on behalf of science. Additionally, the recipients received a one-year membership in AIBS and a subscription to BioScience.

Kulkarni is working toward a doctorate in biogeochemistry and environmental biocomplexity. She earned her undergraduate degree in biology from Duke University in 1999 and her master's degree in marine, estuarine, and environmental sciences from the University of Maryland in 2003.

Her doctoral research concerns nitrogen pollution management. She has received several awards and grants, including a NASA Earth Systems Science Fellowship and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Integrated Graduate Education and Research Training Fellowship.

Kulkarni has held various teaching assistant, grant review, and workshop-planning positions, and last year she headed her program's Graduate Student Association. In 2000, the City of Cincin-nati named her “Volunteer of the Year.”

Hofmann is working toward a doctorate in biology. He earned an undergraduate biology degree in 2000 from Towson University, where he graduated summa cum laude. Like Kulkarni, Hof-mann has received a variety of awards and grants, including two NSF fellowships.

He is a coauthor of a review chapter in a forthcoming volume entitled Bird Coloration,to be published by Harvard University Press. In his spare time, Hofmann serves as the student member of the American Ornithologists' Union Committee on Public Responsibility.

Two PhD candidates received honorable mentions this year: Holly Menninger, who studies behavior, ecology, evolution, and systematics at the University of Mary-land; and Mindy Richlen, who studies marine science at Boston University.

Revised NEON Reports Available Online

The NEON Integrated Science and Education Plan (ISEP) and the NEON Networking and Informatics and Baseline Design (NIBD) have been delivered to NSF and are now posted in the documents section of the NEON Web site,  www.neoninc.org.

The ISEP describes NEON in the context of understanding ecological complexity and advancing ecological theory. It also details the science questions that NEON will address, the observatory's instrumentation and standardized deployment approach, and the NEON national-level education program. The second document, the NIBD, describes the cyberinfrastructure that NEON will support. The NIBD includes technical details regarding embedded cyberinfra-structure for distributed instrument control and reliable data transport; data curation and archiving; data analysis, integration, modeling, and visualization; and NEON portals and collaboration environments.

Because the development of NEON is funded by a cooperative agreement with NSF, the reports as written and posted on the NEON Web site may undergo additional changes at NSF's discretion. NSF will distinguish the elements of the observatory design and infrastructure that will be included in initial deployment from those that will be considered for future phases of NEON. Community comments on both of the NEON reports are being reviewed by the NEON Project Office and will be provided to the appropriate NSF officials.

Recent Articles Online at  www.actionbioscience.org

Recent Public Policy Reports Online at  www.aibs.org

SPECIAL PROGRAM CONTENT

Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, will lead a discussion session entitled “Communicating about Science in Public and Policy Arenas.” Co-leader is Matthew Nisbet, School of Communication, The Ohio State University, who will speak on “Framing Science: Understanding the Battle over Knowledge.”

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